Autistic Christmas

It's my final blog post of 2019, which means we've just had Christmas. I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Because this was the first Christmas since I started blogging I thought it's only fitting to review the experience of Christmas from an autistic point of view. I know that depending on the circumstances it can be a tough 3 days for us neurodivergents, and if I'm honest I'm no exception. But let's start with the positives.

This year is the first year that I did Elf On The Shelf, which I quite enjoyed. I tried to use my own ideas as much as I could but there were some stolen from the internet. I'll leave pictures down at the bottom but if you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen some of my favourites such as one of the elves getting attacked by a Facehugger from Alien, the wrestling match vs my John Cena action figure, and the most popular one was the recreation of the pottery scene from Ghost. Coincidentally, 25% of my 2019 Instagram posts have come from this month, and it's all because of Elf On The Shelf! The other positive is the presents I got. My wife pre-ordered Delain's new album for me, which comes out on the same day that I see them live - so with any luck I might actually end up getting it a bit earlier. From the kids she got me a wooden coaster with outlines of all the first generation Pokémon egnraved onto it, and a bracelet with the kids' initials engraved. My mum and dad got me my joint best present (alongside Delain's new album) in the form of a 3 month subscription to the WWE Network. I'll activate it in a couple of weeks so that I can catch WrestleMania before the 3 months runs out.

Now onto my struggles. Christmas day was horrible for me once we left the house. We went to my mother-in-law's for the day and all of their side of the family came too. When I say all of their side, I mean she's got a big family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, 3 sisters etc as opposed to my side where it's just me, my mum and my dad. My sister, brother-in-law and neice would have been included in that if we didn't fall out with them a few years ago but that's neither here nor there. I hate it when the whole family get together like this because there are far too many people around in too small a house for how many there are. Because of how many of us there are there's always too much going on - too many conversations, too many conflicting interests, too many people trying to involve themselves with the kids etc. Plus the fact that my in-laws have recently got a new puppy. As much as I love dogs - or just about any animal for that matter - he gets really hyper regardless of how busy it is and he ended up upsetting my son, breaking a pair of sunglasses and knocking the Christmas tree over while I was trying to cheer my son up. My kids have been better behaved too with me having to stop and start my dinner several times to deal with various things they wanted, all while we were sat at the table which realistically was a bit to small for all of us but we managed.

My wife told me to go home a couple of times but I tried to stick it out. I had to nip back home for something after dinner anyway as we only live around the corner from my in-laws so I just stayed home for a while and sat in a dark room till things had settled down a bit. I went back just as they were finishing unwrapping their presents, so I probably timed it quite well. I know that really I should have gone home earlier than I did, but the whole "look after yourself" and "you don't have to stay if you don't want to" thing is a lot easier said than done. Half the battle for me (and I know quite a few autistics can relate) is giving myself permission to leave when I need to, and admit/recognise when I'm struggling regardless of whether others are or not. Just because everybody else manages ok it doesn't mean that we have to and it's ok to admit when you're struggling. Long story short, internalised ableism is a bitch.

Then we move onto boxing day, which wasn't as bad. Boxing day is usually when we have my family round but they had all come down with diarrhoea and sickness so they couldn't come, which was a shame because my 9 year-old niece was going to come over as well which would have been great fun for the kids. We've re-arranged seeing my side for tomorrow but it depends whether my niece can still come. Aside from my side coming to our house, boxing day is also round 2 of the day before but at our house instead of the in-laws'. Before everyone came round we went out for some shopping to get the last few bits that we needed for the buffet we were putting on, which even though I was knackered from the day before was nice to get out and take our time for a bit before the madness ensued again. The wife's side filtered in more slowly this time so it was a bit more manageable, as well as them being late. With it being in my own house I felt more comfortable to just wander about freely and spent some time in a different room reading to the kids, installing the WWE Network on my PS4 and a few other bits to stay out of the way. By the time they dug out the karaoke machine though it was time I cleared off upstairs. I plugged my headphones into my phone for some music and played Pokémon Yellow on my GameBoy Colour. I came back downstairs after everyone had gone, then once the kids were in bed we chilled and watched Big Fat Quiz Of The Year before we went to bed ourselves.

So yeah, I'm glad Christmas is over and we're back to normal now although I still feel exhausted from the "festive" few days. We took the kids shopping today and we all spent some of our Christmas money, which was nice. I'll leave you with a few of my favourite Elf On The Shelf pictures. As always, hit Subscribe to keep up to date with new posts and follow me on Twitter too @DepictDave. If you prefer Instagram you can check out all my Elf On The Shelf posts at The_Big_Shaw although I'm planning on changing that to DepictDave in the new year to make it exclusively blog-related. I'll let you know when it happens.

[Image description: Our 2 elves (the one in green and red is called Crimbo, the one in red and white is called Imbo) having a wrestling match against my John Cena action figure. They're in a wrestling ring that I made out of a square cardboard box, some paper straws as ring posts and some pipe cleaners as ropes. The ropes are red, yellow and blue to represent the 3 main brands of WWE; Raw, NXT and Smackdown. Crimbo is face down, unconscious on the box while John Cena has Imbo up on his shoulders in position for his finishing move the Attitude Adjustment.]

[Image description: Imbo is laid flat on his back on our TV unit with a Facehugger attached to his face that I made from PlayDoh. Crimbo is sat next to him leaning back against the TV with his hands over his mouth in horror.]

[Image description: Crimbo and Imbo are sat on our TV unit recreating the pottery scene from the movie Ghost. Crimbo has his hands around a large wooden bowl from my kids' play kitchen while Imbo is sat very closely behind him gently holding his arms and leaning around to one side over Crimbo's shoulder.]

1 Year On

It's been a year now since I was diagnosed autistic, and although I don't feel any different in myself as such, I know from feedback from other people that it really has changed my life in some aspects - all for the better. Since my first year as a diagnosed autie has now come to a close, and the end of not only 2019, but the 2010's, is fast approaching I wanted to have a look back at what my diagnosis means to me.

The main thing I wanted when I was going through the diagnostic assessment was closure, and I certainly got that straight away alongside validation that I'm not just awkward or an oddball. I'm me because I'm autistic, and I'm autistic because I'm me. For a few years before diagnosis it kept playing on my mind whether I was autistic or not, and the whole "am I/aren't I?" was really frustrating for me. Although I was self-diagnosed at the time I didn't feel like I could come out as autistic to people because I didn't think anyone would accept a self-diagnosis outside of the online autism community. It enabled me to open up both personally and professionally, which leads me onto the next benefit that I've gained from diagnosis...

It allowed me to get permanent adjustments made at work, whereas before I was diagnosed my adjustments were on a three-month revisionary basis, and even before that I had to spend months fighting for any adjustments at all. I won't go into details about what happened but my diagnosis helped me make my adjustments permanent. And with the intention of helping any readers who may be having similar struggles, it shouldn't get to the point where one of the reasons you're seeking a diagnosis is to provide evidence to your employer. In the UK the Equality Act 210 means that reasonable adjustments can and should be made even without a formal diagnosis. This is of course subject to criteria, but a quick Google search should help check if you meet them.

This blog is another thing that diagnosis has allowed me to do. It helps me advocate for autism by spreading awareness and acceptance. Admittedly I only have a small following so far compared to some of the advocates I look up to (look on YouTube at Neurodivergent Rebel, Yo Samdy Sam and Invisible I just to name a few), but I've had comments and feedback that show that I am helping and making a difference to people, and that's the whole point. It doesn't matter as such how many people I help through this blog (although obviously the more the merrier), just as long as it's helping somebody then it makes it all worthwhile. Without my diagnosis I probably wouldn't have started blogging back in March and it all comes back to the validation I got from it.

On a similar note, people have said that I've come right out of my shell ever since being diagnosed. I recently had my end of year one-to-one with my team leader at work and I was surprised at how positively she views my last 12 months. I personally don't see myself as any different but it's great to hear how pleased she is with my progress and how I'm joining in more with the team, putting ideas out there and so on. My wife has said the same thing about me coming out of my shell so it must be an all-around difference in me rather than just at work. At the end of the day it's about knowing who you are as a person and accepting that it's ok to be you. My diagnosis has definitely helped massively with that, and although I can't speak for everyone in terms of whether diagnosis is right for them, I would say that it can massively help when going through certain struggles. I also know diagnosis isn't possible/accessible to everybody, but if you do have the opportunity, my advice would absolutely be to give it some thought.

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and I'll be back with the final post of the year the day after boxing day. Don't forget to subscribe with the button at the top of the page, and follow @DepictDave on Twitter. I'll leave you with a picture of my autism Christmas jumper that I designed myself and forgot to include earlier in the month.

[Image description: Me taking a selfie in the mirror wearing my autism Christmas jumper. The jumper is red and the design is a green Christmas tree with a bit of brown trunk showing at the bottom. The tree is decorated with randomly placed baubles in the shape of the infinity symbol. The baubles are in 3 different colours to represent autism; red, gold and rainbow. Across the middle of the tree is the hashtag #AutieAndNice in gold]

Election Results

It's the day after the 2019 UK General Election and I along with many people am crushed by the result. I genuinely don't know whether to lose faith in the British public, or whether to call foul play on the Tories. Either way, the election result plus the fact that I'm currently on my way home from a week's holiday means that I haven't got the spoons today, but I wanted to quickly address what the election result might mean for autism.

The first and most obvious thing is the letter to the party leaders from the National Autistic Society that I linked you to in a post a few weeks ago. It's been a while since I checked the number of signatures on the letter but last I checked it was about 13,000 which is well over their 10,000 target. Regardless of the number of signatures, I highly doubt that it's going to get a look in with Boris still in power. The letter was asking the election winner to make publishing the updated autism strategy a priority as soon as the election was over. As pessimistic as this sounds, I'd be highly surprised if the Tories even give it a second thought, and that saddens me.

The other effect it could have is when the NHS is inevitably sold to America it's going to make assessment, diagnosis and support of autistic people a hell of a lot harder... As if it's not already inaccessible. I explained to someone on Twitter that just because assessment through the NHS is free it doesn't mean it's accessible. I had to ask my GP multiple times for referrals. My first referral was unsuccessful because the assessors didn't believe me, and although my second referral was successful it took 18 months from being referred to receiving my diagnosis. The wait in other parts of the country is longer. Autism services in the UK are massively underfunded and under prioritised making it inaccessible as it is, never mind once we lose free access to NHS services. It scares me where the Tories' policies and attitudes will take us when it comes to autism. I count myself very lucky that I got diagnosed when I did.

Don't get me wrong, not all autistics want or need a diagnosis but the ones it would make a difference to are the ones who are going to suffer. If there's a silver lining it's that as a counter to the government's attitude towards disability, the autistic community (and probably the disabled community as a whole) will most likely band together, advocate, educate, spread awareness, spread acceptance and continue to support each other even more. I've got no faith in the government but I've got every faith in us as a community and I hope I'm right.

That's all I'm going to say this week. If you enjoy my blog and find it interesting or helpful please hit the subscribe button at the top and follow on Twitter @DepictDave. I guess the message today is be kind to each other and support those who need it.

Echolalia

Echolalia is a common trait among autistics, and is simply the act of repeating words or phrases that other people have said. Very similar to this is palilalia, which is repeating your own words or phrases rather than those of others. For the purposes of this post, because echolalia and palilalia are almost exactly the same thing (both repeating words of phrases in a manner that might seem meaningless from an outside perspective) I'll refer to them both as echolalia, but of course please do be aware that the two different forms exist.

When I first discovered what echolalia is a couple of years ago it rang some major bells as it's something that I vividly remember doing as a child, and to an extent I still do it now. I remember when I was young (around primary school age although I'm not sure exactly) my mum's friend who used to cut our hair was at our house with her 2 kids, the oldest of which is the same age as me. I can't remember what I was talking to the 2 brothers about, but the oldest one noticed that I was repeating myself under my breath and commented on it. I think he had probably noticed it a few times before as well because from what I remember it's something that I used to do quite a bit. I'm not sure why but I took the fact that he'd commented on it as meaning it was something I shouldn't be doing, so I started repeating myself entirely in my head instead. Looking back, I'm not sure if there had been some sort of negative reaction to it before that. It's just making me wonder because a) why would I instantly take his comment as a negative thing when there was really nothing negative about it, and b) if I was going to repeat myself why would I only do it under my breath instead of out loud?

Anyhow, as well as repeating things I've said, I also repeat things from other people - also mainly in my head although I have been known to do it verbally when I was younger. What I've noticed about this though, is that it doesn't seem to happen in normal, everyday conversation. It's only when someone has said something funny I find myself involuntarily repeating it in my head over and over and over. I've found myself in awkward positions a couple of times because of it. For example, I had an English teacher in year 10 who was hilarious, and because of my echolalic tendency I would often replay the joke over and over in my head and I ended up still laughing at the same thing after everyone else had stopped. I did this with comedy shows on TV as well. I was a big fan of shows like Harry Enfield & Chums, and The Fast Show. But obviously laughing at the same joke for ages in your own home is a lot more comfortable than in public.

That leads me on to some of the reasons that people might repeat things that they or other people have said. In my case the reason depends on where the repeated phrase comes from. If it's from somebody else it's usually just because it's funny and therefore enjoyable. If it's from myself then it's for a more analytical reason. I often find myself repeating words and phrases to check if I could have worded it better, or to break a word down into pieces to help me work out the meaning/origin of it. Just as a quick demonstration, I like dinosaurs as much as the next person which lead me to thinking about the origins of some of their names. I broke down the word Triceratops into Tri-Cera-Tops. I won't bore you with how I reached my conclusion, but I worked out correctly that it translates literally to "three horns on its face". These are the main reasons for echolalia, although it could also just be a pleasurable sound that is used as a verbal/auditory stim.

As always, I hope this post has been informative and maybe even given a bit of a light bulb moment like I had when I first heard of echolalia. If you found this post helpful and interesting don't forget to subscribe with the button at the top of the page, follow me on Twitter @DepictDave and retweet this post to spread the word!